"Challenges
of Doing Statistics in Ukraine: Legislation, Methodology and
Access to Information"

"A
popular joke in Ukraine muses that there exist three types
of lies: a serious lie, a small lie andÖstatistics." Thus
Viktoriya Gumenyuk (Sociology, Kyiv-Mohyla Academy; Petro
Jacyk Visiting Scholar) opened her presentation on October
10 on "Challenges of Doing Statistics in Ukraine: Legislation,
Methodology, and Access to Information," which illustrated
how this joke has come to be so descriptive of official statistics
in Ukraine. For Viktoriya Gumenyuk herself statistics is inspiration
as much as perspiration--the time she could steal from her
full-time graduate studies has been devoted to intensive research
work at the Kyiv-based International Center for Policy Studies,
a non-profit public advocacy and research organization promoting
administrative reform and improvement of the public services
delivered by various agencies within the Ukrainian government.

Ms.
Gumenyuk introduced the small but eclectic audience to the
challenging project that she travelled to Canada to work on--a
comparative study in the methodological, procedural, and administrative
aspects of government statistics in Canada and Ukraine. By
closely examining the way Statistics Canada operates, Ms.
Gumenyuk hopes to gain valuable experience and identify key
practices that may be replicated in Ukraine for improving
the work of the government-run Central Statistics Committee.

Building
on a three-prong critical analysis of the system of government
statistics in Ukraine--legislative foundations, methodological
challenges, and access to information--Viktoriya Gumenyuk's
incisive study identifies several new and recurring problems
that have compromised the accuracy of the data collected by
the Central Statistics Committee and seriously undermined
public confidence in the general validity of the Committee's
analyses.

One
major source of administrative inefficiency and structural
malfunction has been the Soviet legacy that is still manifest
in the hypercentralized multilayered bureaucracy of the Central
Statistics Committee. Effective coordination between the central
and regional levels of the government statistics establishment
is close to non-existent. Serious legislative defects--like
the practice of regulating ostensibly independent agencies
through presidential decrees--have increased the Committee's
vulnerability to external influence and rendered its practices
less transparent.

A
related and by far more prohibitive impediment to reliable
government statistics in Ukraine stems from the obsolete methodologies
and equipment employed by the Central Statistics Committee.
A striking discrepancy exists between the impractical, non-interpretative,
and largely chaotic nature of the Committee's statistical
surveys, which were developed decades ago and tailored to
the requirements of central planning, and the real needs of
a contemporary market economy. As well, equipment is still
both insufficient and in urgent need of upgrading despite
western technical assistance. The absence of trustworthy and
analytical official statistics has created lucrative market
niches, which, as Ms. Gumenyuk reported, some private statistics
agencies have been only too eager to fill.

Staffing
problems plague the Central Statistics Committee. Attracted
by substantially higher pay and more opportunities for professional
career growth, most qualified and experienced statisticians
have left to work in the private sector. The remaining employees
are not remunerated adequately and still tend to adopt a Soviet-era
mentality, which is not conducive to hard work.

A
final touch to this bleak picture is the alarming precariousness
of the existing legal mechanisms for public access to statistical
data. In the absence of guaranteed avenues for open access
and no regular information broadcast initiatives on the part
of the Committee, the only reliable ways of obtaining official
statistical data remain informal connections or quid pro quo
favors.

With
her concluding remarks, Ms. Gumenyuk addressed some broader
questions pertaining to the degrees of transparency, accessibility,
and reliability of government information in Ukraine. It is
clear that the Ukrainian government bureaucracy is still a
long way from meeting the benchmark for accountability and
openness inherent in the concept of democracy. Yet, positive
signals do emanate from examples of successful civic mobilization
and self-governance initiatives at the grassroots municipal
level as well as from the activities of the many NGOs devoted
to monitoring government bureaucracy, one of which is Ms.
Gumenyuk's International Center for Policy Studies. The activities
of the latter have produced a promising information-sharing
and resource-pooling partnership with the Central Statistics
Committee--an encouraging step forward toward the ambitious
goal of revitalizing official statistics in Ukraine.